I was induced at 39 weeks due to PE. The doctors tried to delay inducing me as long as possible, as they said it is preferable for the baby to make it's appearance when it decides it's time. I was monitored in hospital from 38 weeks, until the doctors felt that the risk to me of the PE was higher than the risk of the inducement to the baby. Inducement can often lead to more complicated births, which can last longer and often lead to assisted delivery or caesarean. Hence the reason that I was being monitored for the optimum time for inducement.
This was my first birth so I cannot tell you if induced births are any different to normal deliveries. However, I can simply tell you what my experience was, so you can make your judgements.
I was given the gel, which is supposed to kick start the process at 5pm on the Wednesday. I was then given a second dose at 11pm that night and a third at 6pm on the Thursday. After the second dose I did begin to feel some twinges. Eventually, after the third dose at 12pm my waters broke and contractions started in earnest. I was offered paracetamol at this stage, which I laughed at as I knew this would not touch the pain, so thought best to try to just manage on my own.
Five hours after my waters broke, I was taken to the delivery room, where they started the iv part of the induction. This lead to my contractions stepping up a gear. I did try for several hours to cope with no pain medication, although I was offered a epidural straight away - the midwife advised this for an induction as I had been fairly sleep deprived for the last few days when they had been using the gel and because they expect induced labour to last a lot longer.
After a few hours I tried the gas and air, when I had continual contractions for twenty minutes with no break in between - apparently this is common with inducements. Unfortunately I had a bad reaction to the gas & air, and freaked out. It was at this point I agreed to an epidural. This was a life saver as I managed to get some sleep - yes you can actually sleep through some of the hard work of the contractions with this - and regained some of the energy I would need for the actual birth.
However, after another four hours with the epidural, I started to have some side affects from this (which included uncontrollable shaking and vomiting), so they withdrew the epidural feed.
Then at one point they started getting concerned as they thought my labour was not progressing and my BP was increasing while the baby's HR decreased. They started planning for an emergency C-Section! Anyway, just as they were about to take me to theatre, they completed a final check on me and told me that I was actually fully dilated. I was then able to start pushing, and my son was finally born at 4.34am - 30 minutes later after I started pushing.
So in total, from my waters breaking my labour lasted 16.5 hours, although the inducement had started 20 hours before that. I was actually told that mine was actually a fast labour for an inducement.
Therefore, although inducment can make the labour a much more prolonged affair, and the contractions can be a lot more severe, you have to weigh up the risk of having an induction v's the risk of not.
However, two pieces of advice I can give is that if you need an epidural have one, don't think you're been weak (which was the reason I delayed, I felt I was letting myself down). My partner was the one who said that I shouldn't worry about that, as he said you'll look back with fonder feelings later if you had a bearable labour rather than an unbeaarble one.
My second piece of advice is that it doesn't really matter what type of birth you have - as soon as that baby is born that's the most important thing. The pain does just disappear (although you will feel a bit bashed about afterwards). When you look into your baby's eyes the last thing you think about is what you went through to get them here.
